Asian monsoon rainfall variation during the Pliocene forced by global temperature change.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31754108.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-13338-4 and PMC identifier 6872654.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The Asian monsoon variations under global temperature changes during the Pliocene are still debated. Here we use a sedimentary record of phytoliths (plant silica) from the Weihe Basin, central China, to explore the history of C<sub>4</sub> grasses and quantitatively reconstruct the Asian monsoon climate since the late Miocene. Our results show that C<sub>4</sub> grasses have been a dominant grassland component since ~11.0 Ma. A subsequent marked decrease in warm- and humid-adapted C<sub>4</sub> grasses and an increase in cool- and dry-adapted C<sub>3</sub> grasses occurred in the Pliocene, ~4.0 Ma; the phytolith-based quantitative reconstruction of mean annual precipitation marked a decrease from 800~1673 mm to 443~900 mm, indicating a reduction in Asian monsoon rainfall in the Pliocene. Our newly obtained records conflict with the hypothesis that the growth of the Tibetan Plateau strengthened the Asian monsoon rainfall. Nevertheless, they emphasize the importance of global temperature as a determinant of Pliocene Asian monsoon variations.